An investigative study into ways of incorporating road safety education in the revised national curriculum statement in the further education and training band.

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This research focuses on how Road Safety Education can be incorporated into the Revised National Curriculum Statement in the Further Education and Training Band.
Education is based on theories about how learners learn, what influences that learning
and what is effective practice. Such theories are based on research. Educational research
may be seen as a systematic attempt to gain a better understanding of the educational
process, generally with a view to improving its efficiency.
Varied view points are obtained when qualified individuals with common or divergent
backgrounds are brought together to explore a problem, to provide information or to
valuate the merits of a proposition. I chose to interview the Heads of Department of the
existing learning areas in order to explore their attitudes and opinions towards the
incorporation of Road Safety Education in the Revised National Curriculum Statement.
The interview focused on their understanding of this curriculum, implementing it, Road
Safety Education and how it can be incorporated into this curriculum.
Questionnaires and interviews are a way of getting data about people by asking them
rather than by observing and sampling their behaviour. For this study the 50 grade 11
learners were presented with carefully selected and ordered questions in a combination of
closed and open form. This enabled the learners to answer freely and fully in their own
words and their own frame of reference concerning the incorporation of Road Safety
Education in the Revised National Curriculum Statement.
This research was prompted by the high fatality rate in the country as a result of road
accidents. An in-depth analysis of documents, provided by the KZN Department of
Transport, were undertaken. This researcher found that documents provided information
about aspects of road safety, proper road usage, and other factors that contribute to the
high fatality rates on our roads, aspects that could not be observed because they had taken
place before this investigative study had occurred.
Each year, publication of the figures for road accidents bring fresh disappointments
especially for those who have striven so hard for an improvement. The time has now
come for us to recognise that the conventional road safety programmes of the past years
are incapable, no matter how delicately applied, of yielding anything but marginal
improvements. What is surely needed is some new approach with a potential for huge
improvements. Road safety should be about education and not about prosecution.
Educational programmes must be undertaken to overcome existing areas of ignorance
and to initiate a process of change concerning road safety. It is therefore imperative that
the Revised National Curriculum Statement incorporates a comprehensive, compulsory
Road Safety Education Programme.